Recent years have seen large-scale litigation of standard-essential patents (SEPs) between companies like Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Google, HTC, Microsoft, Kodak, and Research in Motion. Such patents are particular because they are, by definition, indispensable to any company wishing to implement a technical standard. Such patents bring substantial benefits to their owners and firms that do not have such patents in their own portfolio are sometimes prepared to spend billions of dollars purchasing them and/or signing a license agreement with each of the owners. In addition, the owners have other benefits in financial returns (Blind et al., 2011) and stock market returns (Aggarwal et al., 2011). Thus, firms have huge incentives to obtain essential patents. While there is already a considerable body of literature on the possible effects of SEP ownership on competition (e.g. patent holdup, royalty stacking), not much work has yet been done on how firms obtain such patents in the first place. Notable exceptions are the studies of Omachi (2004), who shows how firms use patent continuations to extend the scope of existing patents in order to make them essential to the standard.
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机译：近年来，苹果，三星，摩托罗拉，诺基亚，谷歌，HTC，微软，柯达和Research in Motion等公司之间发生了标准必要专利（SEP）的大规模诉讼。此类专利之所以特别，是因为根据定义，它们对于任何希望实施技术标准的公司都是必不可少的。这样的专利给他们的所有者带来了巨大的利益，在自己的投资组合中不拥有这些专利的公司有时准备花费数十亿美元购买它们和/或与每个所有者签署许可协议。此外，所有者在财务收益（Blind等，2011）和股票市场收益（Aggarwal等，2011）中还有其他好处。因此，企业具有获得必要专利的巨大动力。尽管关于SEP所有权对竞争的可能影响（例如专利持有量，专利使用费堆积）已有大量文献，但关于企业如何首先获得此类专利的工作尚未完成。 Omachi（2004）的研究是一个明显的例外，他的研究表明企业如何使用专利延续性来扩展现有专利的范围，以使其对标准必不可少。
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